Wednesday, August 26, 2009

The house in Ducor, Calif., seemed perfect. Four bedrooms, two bathrooms and enough acreage for Tammy’s horses, cats and dogs.

It was also near family.

“In 1996, my three daughters and I moved here from Texas,” she said. “My husband had passed away recently and we needed to be near family.”

And the rent, Tammy had found anywhere from $600 to $1,500 a month for something of that size, was only $350 in Ducor.

“I couldn’t believe my good luck,” she said.

But she soon found the reason the rent was so cheap – it was haunted.

“One of the first things we noticed was the wallpaper in the bedrooms,” she said. “One of the rooms had wallpaper that made it look like a padded cell. It literally looked like it had mattresses stuck around the room. The next room had barbed wire wallpaper around it, but the best was yet to come.”

The ceiling in the master bedroom was black, surrounded by dark purple walls. Tammy later wondered if the house had decided the decor for the former occupants.

The first night in the house seemed quiet, but Tammy’s middle daughter sent terror through Tammy over breakfast.

“(She) told me that she had seen the shadow of a man kind of float past her bedroom window,” Tammy said. “I thought she meant outside the window but she said that, ‘no, he was in her room.’”

Tammy hired men to install alarms around the house and yard the same day. But that night, when something invaded the rooms of Tammy and her daughter, the alarms didn’t go off.

“I woke up feeling as though something or someone had sat down on the edge of my bed,” she said. “But when I opened my eyes no one was there so I thought I was dreaming.”

Then the water faucet in the kitchen came on.

“I went to see if one of the kids was up getting a drink of water but no one was there,” she said. “As I started to walk out of the kitchen to go back to bed the door to the fridge flew open.”

Although she couldn’t explain what happened, Tammy went back to bed.

“The next morning my daughter again told me about the guy who walked past her window,” she said. “But this time he had lay down on the bed next to her and was breathing and whispering in her ear.”

When Tammy asked why she didn’t wake her up, the girl said she was too scared to get out of bed.

“She just pulled the covers up over her head and went to sleep,” Tammy said. “That began a nightly ritual for her and for some reason she never went to my room to wake me up to tell me.”

Tammy’s family began living with the faucets turning on by themselves, the television and stereo blaring in the middle of the night, and the refrigerator and the front and back doors standing wide open. But there was more.

“One evening, as my daughters and I were watching television in the living room, a roll of toilet paper flew down the hallway, landed on the floor in the entrance to the living room and rolled into the kitchen,” Tammy said. “We were the only ones there and there was no explanation as to who had thrown the toilet roll down the hall.”

Tammy took her daughters out of town one weekend and asked a family friend to stay at the house to care for the animals. When they returned home, the friend was gone.

“He had left a note,” Tammy said. “It said that he would never set foot in that house again and he advised me to get my family out of it ASAP.”

When she later spoke to him, he told her about the faucets, television and stereo coming on by themselves, and that something invisible had thrown a two-liter bottle of soda at his head.

“That was the last straw for me as well as I didn’t want to put my children through anymore than they had already endured,” Tammy said. “If a bottle of soda could be thrown at someone who didn’t live there, what might happen to my children if I stayed?”

Tammy didn’t try to discover what was haunting the house – she wasn’t going to be in the house long enough to care.

“We moved out a week later and never went back to that house,” she said.

Copyright 2009 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s books on the paranormal, “Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us,” and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

As 12-year-old Chris Wham and his family watched construction workers build their home in St. Charles, Mo., subdivision, everything looked fine. It was 1979.

By 1980, Wham wasn’t so sure.

“In the summer of 1979, my family moved into its first new house,” Wham said. “Not just a new house to us, but a brand new house. In the months before the house was completed, my step-father would drive us out to it and we would watch the men work on it.”

The land was once an apple orchard and sat almost empty as the house went up.

“Our house was one of the first few completed on the street,” Wham said. “So I spent much of the year watching the other houses getting built and making new friends whenever kids would move in.”

A year went by and Wham’s family had comfortably settled in the house.

“It was towards end of summer 1980, school had just started the week before, and I was already playing hooky,” he said. “ I just didn’t want to go to school that day, so I faked a stomach ache so I could stay home.”

Wham stayed in his room until his mother had to go on an errand.

“Near 12 noon, my mother asked me to keep an eye on my baby brother while she ran to the store for more diapers,” he said.

The round trip to the store, Wham figured, might take 15 minutes, and his little brother was sleeping, so he had time to play.

“I told her I would. I’d do anything to get her out of the house, so I could turn off her horrible soap operas,” he said. “As soon as she left I hopped into the big brown La-Z-Boy recliner that was parked in front of the TV and changed over to Channel 11. It was now exactly noon and Green Acres was just coming on.”

As he sat there, the sound of the program drifting through the living room, Wham knew he wasn’t alone.

“No sooner had the theme song ended did I hear, and feel, a rapping over my left shoulder on the back of the big La-Z-Boy,” he said. “A soft thumpity thump, thumpity thump, thumpity thump. The same type of sound an impatient person might create with his fingers on a desk.”

Wham was sure his mother had come home and he was in trouble.

“My first and immediate thought was … ‘Wow, she’s back quick. She must be checking up on me. How did she get in so quietly?’” he said.

But a car hadn’t pull up to the house. No car door creaked open, nor did one close. No footsteps came up the stairs. Fear clutched Wham’s stomach.

“As the thumping continued, I turned my head up and to the left, expecting to see my mother hovering over me,” Wham said.

Something was hovering over him, but it wasn’t his mother.

“I saw a ghostly hand and arm tapping its fingers on the back of my chair,” Wham said. “From the position I was in, I couldn’t see much farther than the elbow, nor did I want to look any farther.”

The entity appeared to be grayish-white and translucent, like smoke – except for the arm.

“The outline of the hand and arm was very well defined,” he said. “I could clearly see the veins and tendons on the back of the hand. The fingers were long and thin with long pointy, dirty fingernails. On the middle finger was a large ring, that even through the transparency of the apparition, appeared to be silver with a large oval black stone in the center.”

Wham turned back toward the television, hoping the arm would go away – it didn’t. The thumpity thump went on.

“I tried to act like I didn’t just see anything,” he said. “I tried to block it from my mind. Then, from across the house, I heard my baby brother as he began to cry.”

The crying broke Wham’s fear. He launched himself out of the chair and ran to his brother’s room holding him until their mother returned.

“As soon as she arrived, I told her my story and she didn’t believe me,” Wham said. “By this time in my life, I had gained a reputation for being a practical joker, and my mother thought this was just another one of my tricks. It most certainly was not.”

Many years have now past at the home without incident, but something lingers in Wham’s mind.

“I do not know if this has anything to do with this story, but the very next day after I saw the hand, I returned from school to find our yard had been tilled over and grass seed had been planted,” he said. “As I walked up and down the rows, freshly dug into the yard, I found my first arrowhead. I’ve long since lost it, but I’ve always wondered if it had something to do with the ghostly hand.”

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo. 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s books on the paranormal, “Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us,” and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.

“As we approached our subdivision, we saw a large blackness in the air,” Becker said. “It was about eight feet in diameter, about 100 feet away from us, and about 30 feet in the air. It was moving in a straight line.”

Her husband also saw the black figure.

“It had no specific shape and its edges undulated,” she said. “As it flew closer we pulled over to watch it. It was so low that you could have hit it with a rock.”

When they noticed the object, the Beckers later named the “pterodactyl,” it slowly and noiselessly crept through the sky from east to west about 50 yards from the back of their house.

“It moved in a perfectly straight line as if it were on a tightrope,” she said.

The couple watched the object as it sailed about 10 feet past them, 30 feet in the air, and folded in upon itself, disappearing.

“It was not a vehicle,” Becker said. “The best way to describe it would be to say it looked like a very large flat stingray (with) no tail. It moved in a perfectly straight line, and never varied from its path.”

This left the college-educated Beckers wondering what they saw.

“My husband thought it was strange, but didn’t have any particular emotional response to the thing,” Becker said. “Also it didn’t seem to have any sort of depth to it. It was like looking into a very dark spot that could have blotted out anything behind it. It didn’t have any wind or exhaust in its trail. Our best thought, though entirely illogical, was that it was a rip in the space-time continuum.”

Whatever the black, undulating “pterodactyl” was flying over their house, the memory has stayed with the Beckers for 13 years.

“I asked myself at the time, ‘how did the object make me feel?’” she said. “It wasn’t pleasant, maybe even slightly menacing. Not that it was menacing me. It creeped me out a little that it clearly came from the direction of my back yard. So it easily could have crossed over my house.”

The couple, that now lives in Creve Coeur Mo., hasn’t seen the object since.

“My husband and I were amazed. We’re just regular people who saw something strange one day and still can’t reconcile that thing with our logical minds,” Becker said. “This stuff is sort of like UFOs in that there is no one you can talk to or no one to report it to. At least with UFOs there is MUFON. Ever since then I’ve been wondering if anyone else has ever seen something like it.”

Copyright 2009 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s books on the paranormal, “Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us,” and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Arcadia Valley Academy’s red brick buildings aren’t original to the campus, but they’ve still been there a long time.

The academy, in Ironton, Mo., opened in 1846 as a Methodist high school and served as a Union military hospital during the Civil War. However, it is best known from its later incarnation as a Catholic girls school that ran from 1877 to 1971. It also served as a convent for nuns of the Ursaline Order until 1985. It has most recently been a bed and breakfast and antique mall.

Most of the buildings, such as the Administration building, the Auditorium, and the Gymnasium, were built between 1907 and 1934, and something unknown lurks in these buildings of the old Academy.

Belinda Clark-Ache, founder/owner of the paranormal investigation group Haunted Missouri Paranormal Studies, heard stories of a haunting at the 200-room academy and conducted a thorough investigation there.

“We were there every month, April through October,” she said. “I used to just go up by myself and rent a room for the night. All the potential; all the earmarks for a haunting were there.”

Such as a disembodied girl’s voice that said “Lucy,” and the presence of orbs. Although orbs, small balls of light captured by digital photography, are sketchy evidence at best – they can often be explained as dust particles, insects or moisture in the air – some are more convincing. Clark-Ache’s group captured many orbs on video that were a mystery to them.

“We got some interesting moving orbs,” she said. “I’m not an orb person, but we have hours of video from the third floor hallway. One winter evening we had moving orbs up and down the hallway. We could never explain them away to our satisfaction.”

Although Clark-Ache’s group found some cursory evidence the Academy is haunted, they weren’t entirely convinced.

“I did an experiment the first few months. I would take (groups of visitors) on a walking tour of the place,” Clark-Ache said. “I asked if anyone got any certain feelings. It turned out after about 60 people; we were averaging seven out of 10 people feeling something out on the third floor senior hallway in the dormitory. But I didn’t get anything compelling.”

Southwest Ghost Finders visited the Academy on invitation from Clark-Ache.

“They did not tell us any history,” Luney said. “We like to go in cold, investigate and hear the history later. It validates the findings.”

Luney stayed in the Priest’s room during her visit, across the hall from a paranormal investigation group from Posey County Clark-Ache also invited.

“We kind of wandered around,” Luney said. “We went in the Bishop’s Room and snapped a bunch of pictures. Posey County showed up and we headed out of the room. I turned around and snapped a picture of the corner where a mirror was. I thought, ‘I’ll check it later.’”

She was shocked at what she found.

“Later, I downloaded it onto my computer and there was the image of a child in that picture,” she said. “You can see her eyes, her hair. You can make it out plain as day. I said, ‘oh, my God.’”

No one else was in the room when Luney took the picture that appears to be a little brunette girl peeking at her from over the foot of the bed.

“We tried to recreate it with actual people and you can’t recreate that,” she said. “It’s obviously a child. It’s just an awesome picture.”

While Luney downloaded the photograph, members of her team watching over her shoulder, the Academy again let them know it was aware of their presence.

“You could hear footsteps out in the hallway,” she said. “We’d look out the door and there’d be nobody there. When we went back in, we’d here little giggles like, ‘I made them get up.’”

But Luney wasn’t finished with the Bishop’s room. Her group went there later in the evening to try and capture Electronic Voice Phenomena (inaudible voices that can be captured on tape)– and they did.

“When we went back in the room later that night, (a group member) said, ‘I think we caught a picture of you,’” Luney said.

When they listened to the recording later, they found the voice of little girl saying, “they got a picture of us.”

Maybe the little girl liked the attention; at 3 a.m., Luney was awoken by odd occurrences in her room.

“We were laying in bed and the bathroom door was opening and shutting itself for no reason,” Luney said. “(I was) laying there and felt faint, feathery touches against the bottom of my feet. Then you would hear ‘shss, shss, shss.’ Like somebody was whispering to you, but nobody was there. “

The next morning, the owners said people have reported experiencing children running around their bed during the night. Luney said children died from influenza and cholera outbreaks and are buried on the Academy grounds.

But the most personal encounter Luney experienced was in the basement of the main building.

“When we were leaving the basement there was an EVP that said, ‘don’t go, Kim.’”

Luney is convinced the Academy is haunted.

“It’s a great place,” she said. “We went back a second time. There’s little strange things that have happened, but we have to have evidence. If we don’t, we throw it out, but the little girl was indisputable.”

Copyright 2009 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt c/o The Examiner, 410 S. Liberty, Independence, Mo. 64050, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s books on the paranormal, “Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us,” and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.

About Me

Jason Offutt is a syndicated columnist, author, college journalism instructor, and fan of all things strange. His books include the novel, "A Funeral Story," the parody survival book, "How to Kill Monsters Using Common Household Items," the humorous travelogue, "Across a Corn-Swept Land," and four books about the paranormal, "Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters," "What Lurks Beyond: The Paranormal In Your Backyard," "Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us," and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri's Most Spirited Spots.” All are available at www.amazon.com.
Jason is available for interviews, speaking engagements and beer festivals. E-mail all serious inquiries to: sjasonoffutt@gmail.com.